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It may not look like much, but the fish camp pictured below was once the place where many a decision was made about the fate of legislation passing its way through the Florida Senate. The fish camp belonged to Raeburn C. Horne, a three-time state legislator from Madison County and an ardent lobbyist in favor of the small loans industry. The camp was located at Nutall Rise on the Aucilla River in western Taylor County.

View of the Raeburn C. Horne fish camp at Nutall Rise in western Taylor County (circa 1960s).

Map showing Nutall Rise and surrounding area. Nutall Rise is named for William B. Nuttall (the second T has been dropped over the years), a Jefferson County planter who was one of several men to buy up a large amount of acreage near the Aucilla River in western Taylor County with the intent to establish a sugar cane plantation. This plan never came to fruition, but the name Nuttall stayed.

Raeburn C. Horne when he was serving as a state senator from Madison County (circa 1941).

Horne was associated with the infamous bloc of state senators known as the “Pork Chop Gang.” The Pork Choppers, as they were frequently called, were mostly from rural northern counties, which had become unusually powerful in the 1950s because the legislative districts of the state had not been redrawn to account for the massive growth of urban areas in earlier years. As a result, the representatives of a small portion of the state’s population were able to dominate the lawmaking process at the Capitol.

A group portrait of the Pork Chop Gang during the 1956 special session of the Florida Senate. Click on the image to see a full list of the senators.

With so much influence concentrated in the hands of so few legislators, the Pork Chop Gang became a prime target for lobbyists like Horne. Some of Horne’s methods were none too subtle; he was once called out, for example, for sending hand signals to the floor of the Florida House of Representatives from his seat in the gallery. More often, however, he engaged in what was called the “social lobby.” This was the practice of treating legislators to meals, parties, and other favors to create opportunities to promote a political position. While some lobbyists kept their activities centered in Tallahassee, Horne preferred to invite legislators to his comparatively quiet and private fish camp on the Aucilla, where they could fish, play poker, and discuss strategy out from under the intense gaze of the public eye.

Looking up the Aucilla River near Nutall Rise. The Horne fish camp and other houses are located on the east bank at right (circa 1950s).

Horne’s fish camp became famous for its gatherings of Pork Choppers just before important decisions had to be made in the Florida Legislature. The group reportedly assembled there in September 1957 ahead of a vote to determine how the public would vote on a bill to redraw the legislative districts of the state. Malcolm B. Johnson, executive editor of the Tallahassee Democrat half-seriously suggested that the people of Florida might soon be expected to pay for the legislators to have their own tax-supported hunting and fishing lodge so they would not have need to hold caucuses on property owned by lobbyists.

A political cartoon from the Tampa Tribune illustrating the reapportionment issue (1955).

The Nutall Rise retreat of the Pork Chop Gang faded away in the 1960s, owing to several events. In 1962, the United States Supreme Court found in the case of Baker v. Carr that misrepresentation in state legislatures due to outdated district boundaries was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause. Like it or not, the Pork Choppers would have to consent to reapportionment, or else the federal government would do it for them. Over the next decade, Florida’s legislative districts were rearranged several times, breaking the Pork Chop Gang’s power. As for Raeburn Horne, he passed away in 1962, just after the Supreme Court rendered its decision in Baker v. Carr.

A lot of water has flowed down the Aucilla past the old Horne property since those days when legislators would gather there for poker and politics. The old place might lack the political clout it once had, but locals tell us you can still catch a good-sized catfish just about anytime.

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